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By Rebecca Wallace

Ad Libs: Downtown with Bryan Ida

Uploaded: May 29, 2013

SoCal meets Palo Alto in a new show of 15 paintings by PA native Bryan Ida. On round and rectangular panels, his thick epoxy layers recall his history with Southern California architecture: its boxes and lines, the experience of looking straight up at a tall building and losing all perspective. When a city becomes all abstract floaters, can you still feel connected to it?

Ida's local ties (besides playing the French horn in the El Camino Youth Symphony) include his stint as a studio assistant for the late abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis in Francis' Palo Alto studio. This was an influential time for the young artist.

"We often talked about the correlation between music and painting, how it is really the same thing just using different senses," Ida says on his website. "I have applied some of the same principles of music theory to my visual practice."

Ida's works are on display May 31 through Aug. 8 at Stanford Art Spaces, together with paintings by Warren J. Hedgpeth and fiber constructions by Aryana B. Londir.